YouTube Scraper – Search, Channels, Playlists & Video Details (no API key)

A fast, affordable alternative to the YouTube Data API – no API key, no quotas. Scrape:

• Search results for any keyword – videos, channels or playlists – with sort (relevance, upload date, view count, rating) and upload-date filters, hundreds of results per query.
• Channels – channel profile (subscribers, video count, description, handle, avatar) plus every video of the Videos, Shorts and Live tabs.
• Playlists – all videos of any playlist.
• Video details – exact view count, likes, publish date, full description, tags/keywords, category, duration, channel and its subscriber count.

Clean, consistent JSON for every video: videoId, url, title, channelName, channelId, channelUrl, viewCount, publishedTimeText/publishedAt, durationSeconds, thumbnailUrl, isLive, isShort, position, source – and with details also likeCount, description, keywords, category, channelSubscriberCount.

Pricing: $1 per 1,000 listed videos/channels/playlists, $2 per 1,000 detailed videos. Combine with our YouTube Transcript Scraper and YouTube Comments Scraper.

Example input

{
  "searchQueries": ["python tutorial"], "searchSort": "view_count", "searchUploadDate": "year", "maxResultsPerQuery": 100,
  "channelUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown"], "channelTabs": ["videos", "shorts"], "maxVideosPerChannel": 0,
  "playlistUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_ZCJB-3pi"],
  "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk"],
  "fetchDetailsForListedVideos": false
}

Example output (search result)

{
  "type": "video", "videoId": "lIId8IDP6TU", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIId8IDP6TU",
  "title": "Lecture 2 : Strings & Conditional Statements | Python Full Course",
  "description": "This lecture was made with a lot of love …",
  "channelName": "Shradha Khapra", "channelId": "UC1XBh-m27kkgwLAwu_SRJBg", "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/@shradhaKD", "channelIsVerified": false,
  "publishedTimeText": "2 years ago", "publishedAt": "2024-08-19T14:10:45.184Z",
  "durationText": "55:41", "durationSeconds": 3341,
  "viewCountText": "6,255,142 views", "viewCount": 6255142,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lIId8IDP6TU/hq720.jpg", "isLive": false,
  "source": "search:python tutorial", "position": 1
}

Channel item:

{ "type": "channel", "channelId": "UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw", "handle": "@3blue1brown", "title": "3Blue1Brown", "subscriberCount": 8550000, "videoCount": 242, "description": "…", "avatarUrl": "…", "rssUrl": "…" }

Use cases

• Market & competitor research – what content ranks for your keywords, who the top channels are, which formats get views.
• Influencer discovery – channels by topic with subscriber and video counts.
• Content monitoring – schedule runs to catch new uploads of competitors (searchUploadDate: today).
• Datasets for AI – video metadata at scale; add transcripts and comments with our companion actors.
• SEO & trend analysis – titles, views and publish dates across thousands of videos.

Notes

• publishedAt for listed videos is derived from YouTube's relative text ("2 years ago") and therefore approximate; detailed videos have the exact date.
• Channel Shorts provide title and views; use details for more fields.
• The actor runs without proxies and switches to Apify residential proxy automatically if YouTube rate-limits.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.001 per listed item (video/channel/playlist) and $0.002 per detailed video.

Integrations

API, SDKs, schedules, webhooks; export JSON/CSV/Excel; Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n; MCP tool for AI agents.

Ready-made examples

One click, input already filled in:

• Export YouTube search results to a spreadsheet
• List every video of a YouTube channel
• Export the videos of a YouTube playlist
• Get views, likes and details for a list of videos
• Scrape all Shorts of a YouTube channel

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube Data API key?

No. The actor reads YouTube's public pages, so there is no key and no daily quota.

How many search results can I get per query?

Several hundred. YouTube stops paging at some point, so for very broad terms combine filters (searchUploadDate, searchSort) or run several related queries.

Can I get the full list of a channel's videos?

Yes – set maxVideosPerChannel to 0 and pick the tabs (videos, shorts, streams).

What is the difference between listed and detailed videos?

Listed items come from search, channel or playlist pages (title, views, duration, rough date). Details add exact publish date, likes, description, keywords and category and cost $2 per 1,000.

Can I get transcripts and comments too?

Yes – pair it with the YouTube Transcript Scraper and YouTube Comments Scraper; they accept the video URLs this actor outputs.

Does it handle rate limits?

Yes. It runs without proxies and switches to Apify residential proxy automatically if YouTube starts blocking.

More data tools by pulsedata

• Google Ads Transparency Center Scraper
• App Store & Google Play Scraper
• Career Page Jobs Scraper
• Website Tech Stack Detector
• YouTube Comments Scraper
• YouTube Transcript Scraper